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| Tyler |
Darkness Falls: (Brian Tyler) Not even the Tooth
Fairy is immune to the whims of Hollywood's B-rate horror industry, as
evidenced by the wretched 2003 film
Darkness Falls. In its
nonsensical plot, the movie postulates that a legend exists in a small
New England town, one that is terrorized by a seemingly supernatural
Tooth Fairy that, instead of giving gifts for kids' baby teeth, kills
anyone who witnesses her doing her task. The demon was once an admired
widow in town who was left disfigured in a fire and was lynched
mistakenly after the temporary disappearance of a couple of local
children. Generations later, she returns to kill innocent civilians at a
rate appropriate for any movie that requires cheap slasher thrills to
maintain audience interest. Fortunately, there's a lighthouse and a few
intrepid survivors of the Tooth Fairy to incinerate the nasty bitch for
good. Even if that plot wasn't ludicrous enough in its basic premise,
its execution by novice director Jonathan Liebesman was completely
senseless, generating one of the worst critical responses for any movie
of that year. Although
Darkness Falls managed to recoup its
budget and launch Liebesman on to a marginal career, there is no
question that the movie is plain awful. For a young composer trying to
earn his way in Hollywood, however, the quality of the films were not a
luxury to be chosen, and Brian Tyler essentially introduced himself to
the industry through these avenues. He had already been writing
overachieving music for low budget and subpar productions for a few
years when the trio of
Darkness Falls,
The Hunted, and
Children of Dune earned him the lasting recognition to sustain a
career. Among his plethora of early horror genre works,
Darkness
Falls is often cited as a highlight for Tyler, despite being largely
characteristic of his other projects from the early 2000's. In general,
Tyler didn't stray far from his formula in these scores, and collectors
of the composer's works will hear portions of
The Hunted and
Frailty in
Darkness Falls. The benefit of
Darkness
Falls, however, is that Tyler packaged his horror ideas in perhaps
his most immense form yet, foreshadowing the overblown explosiveness of
Aliens vs. Predator - Requiem. At a time when horror genre music
was often leagues behind Christopher Young's work, content to serve
endless doses of cheap, ambient muck to basically imitate sound design,
Tyler brought with him a touch of Jerry Goldsmith's style in the genre,
highlighted by melodic complexity and crystal clear
orchestrations.
There has to be something said for Tyler's choice to
"overscore" a movie like
Darkness Falls. This project didn't
deserve such a dynamic orchestral score, but Tyler obviously approached
it with enthusiasm and loyalty to a previous age in film music. The
scope of the orchestral performances is very large, the ambience of the
recording (conducted in a church) is immense, and the composition is
full of thematic development. There are synthesizers and the electronic
manipulation of organic sounds to be heard in several sequences, but
this is primarily an orchestral work. Hyperactive brass and percussion
sections are the highlights, matching some of Tyler's most brutal career
action and horror music. Like
Children of Dune, this score is
somewhat of a sampler of Tyler's capabilities, too, spanning a wide
range of emotional appeal. While the absolutely massive theme for the
horror sequences in
Darkness Falls is the most memorable of the
lot, Tyler's drama and suspense ideas merit your attention as well.
Technically the primary theme is a descending series of phrases that
connects this score to Goldsmith's
The Haunting and Trevor Jones'
The Last of the Mohicans (with a touch of Joel McNeely's
The
Avengers thrown in during "Overhead," a slightly more hip passage
with slight contemporary loops), heard throughout "Darkness Falls" and
in several different contexts throughout, including the evocative
statement in "The Mask," before appearing as an interlude in "End
Titles." Softer on the ears is a pretty, ascending theme for keyboards
and woodwinds in "One Kiss" and "Blood Red Herring." A mysterious theme
of suspicion marks the scenes of quiet uncertainty, its alternating
notes sometimes existing underneath the main theme (as in
"Interrogatorio"). In Tyler's methods of expressing these melodies, it's
difficult not to get the feeling that he was directly channeling
Goldsmith's instrumental techniques. John Ottman occasionally attempted
the same thing at the time, but Tyler really did manage to nail such
associations. Rarely did Goldsmith ever build his rhythmic mayhem to
such earth-shattering proportions, however, and
Darkness Falls
remains an exhibit of Tyler's tendency to go over the top when stirring
up scares of a fantasy nature. At the time,
Darkness Falls was
heralded as a near classic by film music fans, but as Tyler has extended
its sound into other works over the subsequent decade, it's lost a bit
of its mystique. Because the film tanked, the 48-minute album isn't in
abundance, and be aware that it arranges its tracks out of chronological
order as per Tyler's usual insistence upon placing his favorite cues at
the start. There's enough quality material here to have merited a proper
narrative arrangement, but be careful of the hype surrounding this
impressive but ultimately stifling score.
*** @Amazon.com: CD or
Download
| Bias Check: |
For Brian Tyler reviews at Filmtracks, the average editorial rating is 3.2
(in 41 reviews)
and the average viewer rating is 3.13
(in 19,671 votes). The maximum rating is 5 stars.
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The insert includes a short note from the director about the score.
